Hockey is a fast, physical sport with a history full of quirky trivia — from a trophy once used as a dog dish to a puck that can travel over 100 mph. Here are some fun, fact-checked facts about the game.
When Lord Stanley of Preston donated the Stanley Cup in 1892, the trophy itself cost only about $50 (roughly £10 at the time). It's now considered the most storied trophy in professional sports.
According to hockey folklore, some of the earliest outdoor games in the 1800s were played with a frozen piece of cow dung as a makeshift puck before rubber discs became standard — a fun legend, though historians can't fully confirm it happened widely.
Zdeno Chara holds the NHL All-Star Skills Competition record for hardest shot, clocking in at 108.8 mph in January 2012.
Winning Stanley Cup players get to spend a day with the trophy, and over the decades it has reportedly been used as a cereal bowl, a christening font, and even a dog's food dish.
NHL players regularly skate at speeds of 20 to 30 mph, making hockey one of the fastest team sports in the world.
Wayne Gretzky is the NHL's all-time leading scorer with 2,857 career points, a record that includes both goals and assists.
The first organized indoor hockey game was played on March 3, 1875, at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink by a group of McGill University students.
Wayne Gretzky was famously superstitious, tucking his jersey into his pants on only the left side and always following the same warm-up routine before games.
Legendary goaltender Patrick Roy was known for talking to his goalposts during games, even thanking them after they helped him stop a puck.
The Zamboni ice-resurfacing machine was invented in 1949 by Frank Zamboni, who built it to resurface an ice rink he owned in Paramount, California.
The championship team doesn't keep the original Stanley Cup — the NHL awards them a permanent replica while the historic original stays in circulation for future winners and lives at the Hockey Hall of Fame in the off-season.
A standard hockey puck is made of vulcanized rubber, is 1 inch thick and 3 inches in diameter, and weighs about 6 ounces.
The Original Six era of the NHL (1942-1967) featured just six teams: the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Toronto Maple Leafs.
We write every article to be genuinely fun — and genuinely true. Each fact is checked against reputable sources before it goes live. Spotted something off? Tell us and read our fact-check policy.
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